Hairy

A couple of mornings ago I said goodbye to Robin and trotted off to work as normal. Once she’d seen me safely out of the door, she wandered into the bathroom for her morning ablute. Staring idly into the mirror, she was horrified to discover a long black hair poking out of her nose.

Could it be the tail of a brain eating alien from Mars? She couldn’t think of any other explanation. After all, the hairs she grew naturally were not at all black and even though I do still have some black hairs nestling among the grey, she had no memory of me shoving my head up her right nostril as I kissed her goodbye. On balance, a brain eating alien seemed highly likely. She’d been feeling a little absent minded of late. If an alien had been eating her brain, that feeling could be explained perfectly rationally as a literal absence of her mind.

She pulled tentatively at the hair and, much to her relief, it proved not to be attached to any vital nasal structures. It slid out easily. There was no trace of any brain matter adhering to the hidden end. Furthermore the hair was long and straight. There was absolutely no way that I could have put it into her nasal passage for my black hairs are curly and crinkly and go sproing when pulled.

The only possible conclusion was that Milo the Black Cat had been extra intimate during the night. Lately he has taken to sleeping on Robin’s pillow, just above her head. He purrs loudly at the enormous pleasure this position affords him and dribbles copiously all over the pillow and all over Robin. Every so often he gets overcome with love and affection and he leans forward and licks the end of her nose. It is, she claims, a sensation rather akin to being rubbed down with wet sandpaper. But she has learned to sleep through it and these days she hardly notices at all.

But now it seems that he has discovered another hobby to while away the long hours of the night when neither of us is available to feed him. Now he is stuffing fur up Robin’s nostrils. Perhaps he is making a nest for himself and one night soon, when Robin is fast asleep and the alien brain eater from Mars has completely emptied her head, he will crawl up her nose and settle down for a snooze in the snug fur lined cavity of her skull.